The War Against Boys PDF
Preview The War Against Boys
The War Against Boys How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men by Christina Marie Hoff Sommers 2013 ~ All Your Books Are Belong to Us !!! ~ http://inclibuql666c5c4.onion The War Against Boys How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men Copyright © 2013 Christina Marie Hoff Sommers Simon & Schuster A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Simon & Schuster hardcover edition August 2013 Jacket design by Laurie Carkeet Jacket photograph © Catherine Lender/Getty Images New and Revised Edition. ISBN 978-1-4516-4418-0 ISBN 978-1-4391-2658-5(ebook) Despite popular belief, American boys tag behind girls in reading and writing ability, and they are less likely to go to college. Our young men are greatly at risk, yet the best- known studies and experts insist that it's girls who are in need of our attention. The highly publicized "girl crisis" has led to many changes in American schools, politics, and parenting...but at what cost? In this provocative book, Christina Hoff Sommers argues that our society has continued to overemphasize the troubles of girls while our boys suffer from the same self-esteem and academic problems. Boys need help, but not the sort of help they've been getting. Contents Preface to the New Edition 1 Where the Boys Are Boys and Girls in the Classroom But Don’t Boys Test Better? Where Have all the Young Men Gone? The Empire Strikes Back What Motivates the Women’s Lobby? The Economic Fallout The Women’s Lobby Again A Smoking Gun on How Our Schools Fail Boys 2 No Country for Young Men The Risk-Free Schoolyard The Decline of Recess Zero Tolerance for Boys The Superpredators Retreat and Reinforcements Reimagining Boys The Heart and Mind of a Gender Equity Activist The Fallout Pathological versus Healthy Masculinity 3 Guys and Dolls A Wellesley College Equity Seminar Early Interventions William’s Doll The World According to Virginia Valian What If Mother Nature Is Not a Feminist? Ms. Logan’s Classroom Interdicted Research The ACLU Goes to War Against Single-Sex Schools Eight Professors and a “Study” Respect for Difference 4 Carol Gilligan and the Incredible Shrinking Girl Unfairness and Not Listening What About Boys? The Girl Crisis Seven Women and a Fax Machine An American Tragedy The Myth Unraveling “Landmark Research” Conclusion 5 Gilligan’s Island “Masculinity in a Patriarchal Social Order” Boys and Their Mothers Boys Out of Touch with Their Feelings A Good Word for the Martial Virtues Gilligan’s Direction 6 Save the Males The Media Blitz A Nation of Hamlets and Ophelias Boys Out of Touch A Plea for Reticence The Culture of Therapy Therapism versus Stoicism 7 Why Johnny Can’t, Like, Read and Write Knowledge Acquisition versus Jazz Improvisation British and Australian Initiatives Back in the USA The Wider Background Our Tinkerers, Ourselves The Women’s Lobby Strikes Back Are There More Girl Geniuses? The Road to Recovery 8 The Moral Life of Boys When the “Barbarians” Don’t Get Civilized “Our Guys” “What’s Not to Like About Me?” A Socratic Dialogue Value-Free Kids The Courts Enter the Fray Where the Reformers Go Wrong Evil Boys The Quiet Revival of Character Education Aristotle in Idaho How to Be Successful 9 War and Peace The Great Relearning Acknowledgments Preface to the New Edition When the first edition of The War Against Boys appeared in 2000, almost no one was talking about boys’ educational and social problems. Now it’s hard to open a newspaper without stumbling upon references to the multiple books, articles, studies, and documentaries highlighting boys’ academic, social, and vocational deficits. So is the war over? Not yet. Although many educators recognize that boys have fallen far behind girls in school, few address the problem in a serious way. Schools that try to stop the trend, through boy-friendly pedagogy, literacy interventions, vocational training, or same-sex classes, are often thwarted. Women’s lobbying groups still call such projects evidence of a “backlash” against girls’ achievements and believe they are part of a campaign to slow further female progress. The recent advances of girls and young women in school, sports, and vocational opportunities are cause for deep satisfaction. They should not, however, blind us to the large and growing cohort of poorly educated young men in our midst, boys who are going to be lost in our knowledge-based economy. To address the problem, we must acknowledge the plain truth: boys and girls are different. Yet in many educational and government circles, it remains taboo to broach the topic of sex differences. Gender scholars and experts still insist that the sexes are the same and argue that any talk of difference only encourages sexism and stereotypes. In the current environment, to speak of difference invites opprobrium, and to speak of boys’ special needs invites passionate, organized opposition. Meanwhile, one gender difference refuses to go away: boys are languishing academically, while girls are soaring. In the first edition of The War Against Boys, I focused primarily on how groups such as the American Association of University Women, the Wellesley Centers for Women, and the Ms. Foundation were harming our nation’s young men. These organizations and their doctrines are still very much with us. But in this revised edition, I describe the emergence of additional boy-averse trends: the decline of recess, punitive zero-tolerance policies, myths about juvenile “superpredators,” and a misguided campaign against single-sex schooling. As our schools become more feelings centered, risk averse, competition-free, and sedentary, they move further and further from the characteristic sensibilities of boys. However, in the fourteen years since The War Against Boys was first published, England, Australia, and Canada have made concerted efforts to address the boy gap. In these countries, the public, the government, and the education establishment have become keenly aware of the increasing number of underachieving young males. In stark contrast to the United States, they are energetically, even desperately, looking for ways to help boys achieve parity. They have dozens of commissions, trusts, and working groups devoted to improving the educational prospects of boys. Using evidence and not ideology as their guide, these education leaders speak openly of male/female differences and don’t hesitate to recommend sex-specific solutions. Success for Boys, for example, is an Australian program that has provided grants to 1,600 schools to help them incorporate boy- effective methods into their daily practice.[1] In Great Britain, ten members of Parliament formed a Boys’ Reading Commission and published a comprehensive report in 2012.[2] It offers educators a “tool kit” of successful practices. Paul Capon, president of the Canadian Council on Learning, acknowledges the political temptation to avoid or deny the problem of male underachievement. Still, he says, “You have to ask what is happening, and you have to ask why. It’s a head-in-the-sand, politically correct view to say there’s no problem with boys.”[3] In the United States, our education establishment remains paralyzed with its head in the sand. The subtitle of the first edition was “How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.” The emphasis on misguided—I did not intend to indict the historical feminist movement, which I have always seen as one of the great triumphs of our democracy. But some readers took the book to be an attack on feminism itself, and my message was lost on them. In this edition, I have sought to make a clearer distinction between the humane and progressive women’s movement and today’s feminist lobby. That lobby too often acts as a narrow, take-no-prisoners special interest group. Its members see the world as a zero-sum struggle between women and men. Their job is to side with the women—beginning with girls in the formative years of childhood. Most women, including most equality-minded women, do not see the world as a Manichean struggle between Venus and Mars. The current plight of boys and young men is, in fact, a women’s issue. Those boys are our sons; they are the people with whom our daughters will build a future. If our boys are in trouble, so are we all. In the war against boys, as in all wars, the first casualty is truth. In this updated edition, I give readers the best and most recent information on “where the boys are.” I say who is warring against them and why; I describe the best scientific research on the issues in debate; and I show readers the high price we will pay if we continue to neglect academic and social needs of boys. I also suggest solutions. This book explains how it became fashionable to pathologize the behavior of millions of healthy male children. We have turned against boys and forgotten a simple truth: the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal males are responsible for much of what is right in the world. No one denies that boys’ aggressive tendencies must be mitigated and channeled toward constructive ends. Boys need (and crave) discipline,
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